When I saw Pavements, the new documentary about the beloved indie band Pavement, I felt like I was watching a collage of memories — some mine, some the band’s, all stitched together with fuzzed-out guitars and a healthy dose of disorientation.
Directed by Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell, Listen Up Philip), Pavements is less a traditional music documentary and more a surreal, metafictional meditation on myth-making and the feeling of looking back on your own creative life. In addition to capturing footage of the band’s reunion, Perry included clips of a full-scale Pavement musical and museum exhibit he produced, as well as archival footage and biopic-style reenactments with actors playing the band members. Joe Keery (Stranger Things, Fargo) stars as a fictionalized Stephen Malkmus, wandering through semi-scripted recreations of pivotal moments in the band’s history.
It’s a strange and often deliberately awkward watch. For longtime fans of Pavement — and I count myself among them — it’s full of emotion and edge-of-your-seat sincerity as well. The movie doesn’t try to tell a clear, linear story. Instead, it leans into confusion, discomfort and postmodern pastiche.
The band itself, famously loose and self-aware even at the height of their 1990s fame, seems largely ambivalent about the whole project. I spoke with Pavement’s auxiliary percussionist, Bob Nastanovich, shortly after I saw the film. He shared that it’s a complicated experience to watch a highly stylized version of your own life.
The most compelling parts of Pavements are the musical ones: the grainy archival clips, the live footage of fans clutching each other, grinning or crying or shouting along to the songs, and the sense of raw chemistry and charm that made Pavement so magnetic to begin with. Formed in Stockton, CA, in the late 1980s, the band became a kind of indie rock North Star in the '90s — critical darlings with an anti-careerist slouch. Their lo-fi recordings, wry lyrics and jangly guitars made it seem like anyone could start a band — though as Nastanovich pointed out, “to be a band like Pavement, you need at least one uniquely rare, talented person.” For them, that person was Malkmus.
The film, which comes on the heels of a broader Pavement renaissance, was screened widely earlier this summer, including in Davenport. A 2022–23 reunion tour brought the band back to stages across the world and attracted a new generation of fans — many of whom first heard the band through the viral success of their B-side “Harness Your Hopes,” via TikTok. Matador Records, which acquired the band’s full back catalog in 2020, has helped fuel the resurgence with reissues, strategic releases and projects like the hybrid documentary.
This all might sound like a lot of self-mythologizing — and it is. But Pavements doesn’t fully buy into its own mythology. It’s often winking, contradictory and incomplete. It invites the viewer to question what’s real, what’s reenacted and what it means when a band becomes an institution.
For fans, that messiness may feel familiar. Pavement has always operated in the space between sincerity and irony, precision and chaos. The movie evokes some of that spirit amidst the discomfort and confusion of its painfully self-aware mockumentary stylings.
Whether or not the Alex Ross Perry treatment is to your taste, after watching you may find yourself ready for more Pavement lore. If you’re interested in a more traditional take on the band’s legacy, Nastanovich recommends Louder Than You Think (2023), a low-budget documentary about the late Gary Young, which traces the legend of Pavement through the story of the band’s original drummer.
But Pavements offers its own kind of truth — often fragmented, sometimes vaguely satirical, and unexpectedly moving throughout. It doesn’t try to explain Pavement. It lets the band remain what it’s always been: open-ended, slightly off-center and deeply influential.
Pavements is streaming on MUBI now, and don't miss an additional Iowa screening of the film at the Alternating Currents festival, happening next month.